House Passes $1.1 Trillion Bipartisan Spending Measure…Excluded are the benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.

The House passed a $1.1 trillion bipartisan spending bill to finance the U.S. government through Sept. 30, a turnaround from the Tea Party-fueled discord that caused a 16-day partial shutdown in October.

The Senate will start considering the measure today with the goal of sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature as soon as possible. The administration supports it.

Three months ago, Tea Party Republicans’ refusal to fund Obama’s 2010 health-care law led to a government shutdown that proved disastrous for the party in public-opinion polls. This time, Republicans agreed to finance the health-care law while Democrats accepted far less spending than they had proposed.

“In this agreement, no one gets everything they want,” Representative Nita Lowey of New York, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in an interview at the Capitol yesterday. “It’s a good bill, a solid bill.”

The bill swept through the House on a 359-67 vote and was on track for a big Senate vote by week’s end. Republicans voted for the bill by a 2 1/2-1 margin, and just three Democrats were opposed.

The measure funds virtually every agency of government and contains compromises on almost every one of its 1,582 pages. It covers the one-third of government spending subject to annual decisions by Congress and the White House, programs that have absorbed the brunt of budget cuts racked up since Republicans reclaimed control of the House three years ago.

Excluded are the giant benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps that run on autopilot and are increasingly driving the government deeper into debt.

This above statement is n outright lie perpetrated by dumbasses. Social Security funds itself by workers paying into the assistance program from the very first job they hold, until retirement.

Tea party Republicans, chastened after sparking a 16-day partial shutdown of the government in October in a kamikaze attempt to derail President Barack Obama’s health care law, appeared resigned to the bill.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of opposition,” one tea party leader, Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, said before the vote. “The die has been cast for the next year on budget fights.”

To buy time for the Senate debate, Congress on Wednesday sent President Barack Obama a three-day funding bill in time to avert a scheduled shutdown at midnight. The Senate cleared that measure by an 86-14 vote and Obama quickly signed it into law.

The bill increases core agency spending by $26 billion over the fiscal 2013 year, after last year’s automatic spending cuts took them to $986 billion. But it’s $31 billion less than Congress passed last March before automatic cuts known as sequestration took effect.

The Pentagon faces a tight squeeze even as it avoids what would have been another $20 billion wave of automatic cuts. The Pentagon’s core budget is basically frozen at $487 billion after most accounts absorbed an 8 percent automatic cut last year. Adding $6 billion to Obama’s war request provides some relief to readiness accounts, however, though active duty troop levels would still be cut by 40,000 to 1.36 million. It includes $85 billion for overseas military operations, a slight cut from last year.

The bill includes war funding on top of $1.01 trillion for government operations, an amount lawmakers agreed on in December as part of a two-year budget. While many Tea Party Republicans in the House opposed that plan, Speaker John Boehner criticized Republican-allied groups that campaigned against the budget deal.

We are able to fund war, but unable to fund the sick, starving, and unemployed in America. Simply dumbass.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes government waste, said a person would have to read the bill at more than a page a minute, without sleep, to understand the entire measure in time for the vote.

“While we’re happy Congress is finally getting its work done -– albeit more than three months late — this is not how legislation that is funding all of government should be done,” Steve Ellis, vice president for Taxpayers for Common Sense, said in an e-mail.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, told the Rules Committee Jan. 14 that he hoped the rush was a one-year-only event.

“I only wish we could consider each and every bill in this package separately, but unfortunately, the timing gives us one shot and one shot only to get it done,” Rogers said.

Lawmakers have said a more regular appropriations cycle will reduce the threat of shutdowns and provide certainty to businesses and investors.

NASA, the FBI and the Border Patrol all won spending increases at the expense of cuts to the Transportation Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service and foreign aid. There’s money to repair the iconic cast iron dome of the U.S. Capitol, full funding for food aid for low-income pregnant women and their children, and a $150 million increase over 2013 for high-priority transportation infrastructure projects. Army Corps of Engineers construction accounts get a more than $300 million hike over Obama’s request for flood control, shoreline protection and environmental restoration and other projects.

The bill fills out the budget agreement sealed last month by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the heads of the House and Senate Budget Committees. Murray and Ryan left it to the chairmen of Congress’ appropriations committees, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., to work out the details.

This bill is great….if you are not A Student. A Veteran. A Senior Citizen. On Unemployment Insurance while job searching. A Mother on SNAP. In other words, if you are the 99% of Americans, you are fucked.